Sadly,
the protests have not been against the abortion and homosexual agenda, whose
government obsession to impose it should be a top priority in the concerns of a
Christian people.

In
the early 1980s, Brazil had one of the biggest debts in the world and the
commonest word in the Brazilian news was IMF (International Monetary Fund). Prices
were skyrocketing. Inflation was the daily friend of Brazilians. All of this
during the military regime, which was not corrupt.

Demonstration against the military rulein the 1980

Multitudes
rallied as if Dilma Rousseff and her socialist Workers’ Party were in the
government. The Brazilian people were tired of economic recession, inflation
and high prices. So there were protests and more protests. Even many Brazilians
in the United States made protests in the front of the Brazilian Embassy and
consulates in the U.S. They did not spare Brazilian President João Baptista
Figueiredo even when he needed to travel to the U.S. for medical treatment. In
fact, abroad the most prominent Brazilian demonstrations against the Brazilian
military regime happened in the U.S.

As an
effort to appease the huge discontentment of Brazilians, the military
government, under President Figueiredo, decreed that every October 12, from 1982
on, would be a national holiday in honor of Our Lady “Aparecida” as “Patroness
of Brazil.” (“Aparecida” is an image of a black lady interpreted by Brazilian
Catholics as “Mary, mother of Jesus,” but strangely with black skin. So she is
the Brazilian black Mary.)

Such
decree left evangelicals immensely displeased. In opposition to the decree,
Pentecostal evangelist Manoel de Mello called evangelicals for a demonstration
at the Pacaembu Stadium, in São Paulo, against idolatry, in October 12, 1982. In this date, the stadium was
overcrowded, even under torrents of rain, for the service of protest against
the national idolatry established by the military government.

Evangelicals
were dissatisfied because they believed that Brazil belonged to the Lord Jesus,
but because of the financial crisis, the military men handed Brazil over to Aparecida.
Even today, the military decree keeps Brazil surrendered to Aparecida (the
black Mary), which was incapable to protect Brazil from a leftist domination (PT,
PSDB, etc.).

Even
when Brazil was more Catholic, such a national holiday handing Brazil over to
Aparecida had never been created. Yet, the military strategy, although having
immensely pleased the Catholic Church and the National Conference of Bishops of
Brazil, in no way helped Brazil to escape the economic crisis. Inflation was
getting worse, the minimum wages were not enough to cover minimum expenses and protests
against the military government grew larger and larger. It was in this
environment of economic recession that Liberation Theology communities,
connected to the Catholic Church, created and strengthened the Workers’ Party.

With
this historic knowledge, you can assess better what is happening in Brazil
today. With or without government corruption, Brazilians are going to protest
against an economic crisis hitting their pockets. Brazilian protested against
the military rulers, who were not corrupt. Brazilians protest against Rousseff,
who is extremely corrupt. In both cases, the Brazilian motivation is economic
crisis.

In
the case of military rulers, who were hard-working and honest investors in the
development of Brazil, is hard to understand how their administration was as
economically recessive as the Marxist Rousseff administration is. The best
explanation I have ever read was provided by U.S. economist John Perkins, in
this article: http://bit.ly/1hhIpRc

Monday, August 24, 2015

Bishop Edir Macedo and Homosexuality

By Julio
Severo

The official
website of the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God (UCKG) announced that its
founder, Bishop Edir Macedo, has a stance different, in the homosexual issue,
of the position of many evangelical leaders in Brazil.

Bishop Edir Macedo

According
to the website, Macedo said, “God does not want nothing by force. And we in the
Universal Church do not impose anything on anyone… There are many evangelicals,
ministers and churches raising a flag against the homosexual movement and
against homosexual marriage. I ask: would Jesus do it if He were living in our
time? I do not believe that He would do it, because in His time there were
homosexuals and Jesus did not speak anything. Jesus did not raise a flag,
saying, ‘Look, you should speak up against homosexuality, that it is forbidden,
that it should not be done.’”

Macedo
presented his view immediately expressing a contradictory information, because
there is imposition at UCKG — concerning offerings. Many of the services of
this strange neo-Pentecostal church are dedicated to impose on the members’
consciences that with no big offerings, there is no blessing. Even though it is
not a legal pressure, it is a psychological imposition and manipulation. The
result of the psychological pressure is offering money flooding the UCKG safes
and making its biggest leaders rich, including Macedo, who rolls in money at
offerers’ expense

Actually,
Jesus made an abundance of miracles of healing and deliverance, but you never
see Him saying, “If you want to receive a miracle, take part in the Miracle
Campaign, with an offering (psychologically compulsory, as usual) from 50
percent or more of your income. You need to sacrifice your pocket!” No, with
Jesus no one needed to empty his pockets and fill others’ pockets. But
everybody received miracles. With Macedo is different: only those who fill his
pocket are worthy to receive miracles. Big sacrifices, big miracles. His
theology is an aggressive prosperity theology.

As to
Macedo’s politically correct view that Jesus did not speak up against homosexuality,
this perspective, which is not originally from him, has been expressed by
progressive Protestants (progressive in Brazil is another designation for
socialist). Rev. Carlos Bezerra, who is considered an ideal politician by the liberal
sensationalist tabloid Genizah, said in 2013:

“How many
times did Jesus speak about homosexuality? I answer: Never… Were homosexuals in
the top list of people most confronted by Him?”

Bezerra
is also a state representative and the most prominent leader of PSDB in the São
Paulo state. (PSDB is the social democratic party in Brazil. Even though PSDB
has opposed the ruling socialist Workers’ Party, PSDB founder Fernando Henrique
Cardoso is a close friend of Bill Clinton. In the last Brazilian presidential
election, David Axelrod, a Marxist strategist who was the top Obama adviser,
came to Brazil to build the political image of the PSDB candidate. So the
political fight in Brazil has been anti-U.S. leftists against pro-U.S.
leftists.) It is with his conviction that Jesus has never condemned
homosexuality that Bezerra never mobilized PSDB to hinder several homosexualist
laws furiously advancing in the São Paulo state, ruled by PSDB.

Answering
Macedo, who is imitating Bezerra, you could also say, “How many times did Jesus
speak about child abuse? I answer: Never… Were child abusers in the top list of
people most confronted by Him?”

Should
you remove the gay agenda and child abuse from Christian concerns just because
Jesus never mentioned them directly?

Jesus
just did not attack head-on the homosexual agenda because this was not the
obsession in the Jewish society where he preached the Gospel. Each generation
has its own challenges and special attention. Without the Holy Spirit to guide
us in God’s Word, it is impossible to give an answer to these challenges and
special attentions. In this point, it is important to give attention to
Luther’s words, “If I declare openly, with the loudest voice and the clearest
expression, each portion of God’s truth, except precisely the tiny portion that
the world and the devil are, in this time, attacking, then I am not really confessing
Christ, however much I may cry aloud that I am confessing Him.”

Did
Jesus speak or not against homosexuality? If you believe God’s Word, the answer
is yes.

“In the beginning was the Word, and the
Word was with God, and the Word was God.” (John 1:1 ESV)

Jesus
is the Word. When you read Leviticus or Romans condemning homosexual acts, it
is Jesus speaking. When you read the Old or the New Testament condemning homosexual
acts, it is Jesus speaking.

In
this point, some could conclude that Macedo is following some crazy prophecy or
revelation that made him stray from God’s Word. Actually, Macedo rejects all
prophecy and revelation for today. He believes that such manifestations of the
Holy Spirit were available only 2,000 years ago and that today prophecies and
revelations are demonic. Regarding to prophecies and revelations, he follows
the cessationist
heresy.

So if
a prophecy or revelation comes to Macedo saying “Macedo, stop supporting the socialist
Workers’ Party. Stop advocating abortion. Stop joining liberals to attack my
servants who warn about the gay agenda” his answer will be, “Shoo, Satan! I
expel you from my life with all your false directions.”

I
believe in Christian revelations and prophecies as gifts given by the Holy
Spirit to equip his church. But do I need these gifts to reject the socialist
Workers’ Party, abortion and the gay agenda? Of course, I do not. I have never
needed these gifts to know that socialism, abortion and the gay agenda are malignant.

And
how to say that fighting these malignant agendas has no part in a prophetic
manifestation in the last days? A prophecy in Malachi 4 says that before the
great Day of the Lord, He will send Prophet Elijah, whose ministry was to fight
the worship of god Baal, which was rife with baby sacrifice — equivalent today
to abortion — and homosexual priests — equivalent today to the current
condition of homosexuality, which is considered sacred by dirty laws.

This
is, Prophet Malachi prophesied a restoration of Elijah’s prophetic ministry for
the last days. Oh, I forgot that Macedo does not believe in prophecies…

If
Macedo is not following prophecies and revelations, so whom is he following? In
the homosexual issue, he is following Bezerra, who is liberal. But Macedo’s
embrace of socialism is not new. Even though he today condemns pastors raising
a flag against the gay movement and homosexual “marriage,” he is famous for his
political endorsement of Brazilian socialist former and current presidents Lula
and Dilma Rousseff. For years, Macedo has been raising a Workers’ Party flag at
UCKG.

Using
the same Macedo’s rule of measure, I ask: Would Jesus do it if He were living
in our time? I do not believe that He would do it.

Although
he declares that UCKG does not impose anything on anyone, apparently no UCKG
minister remembers it in election time, when they impose on their congregations
the choice of just candidates handpicked by the UCKG national leaders. And when
these candidates are elected, their work has to be aligned with the UCKG big boss’
commands. If the big boss raises the Workers’ Party flag, everybody else are
supposed to follow him.

I
ask: Would Jesus do it if He were living in our time? I do not believe that He
would do it.

And
coincidently the Workers’ Party (WP) main flag has been abortion and
homosexuality. With this flag, WP attacks any individual opposing abortion and
homosexuality. In fact, every socialist will make the same attack. This is the
reason Ed René Kivitz and other Brazilian progressive Protestants advocate gay
rights and attack Assemblies of God minister Silas Malafaia and others in their
conservative stances against abortion and the gay agenda. In the same vein,
Carlos Bezerra of PSDB and Macedo of UCKG make the same attacks.

I
liked more when UCKG, in the late 1970s, had an aggressive focus on delivering
people from the oppression of Afro-Brazilian religions — which are very similar
to voodoo and Santeria and, according to the Bible, are witchcraft. Today, the UCKG’s
aggressive focus is to take money from people and invest in the fortunes of
UCKG Solomons, who abound in greed, but are pauper in wisdom and Christian
love.

During
the 1980s and 1990s UCKG was conservative and pro-life. In 1993 a UCKG
newspaper in São Paulo declared,

According to the Bible teaching,
God gave free will to every human being. In other words, he gave to each
individual the ability to choose what he wishes to do with his life. But the
right to grant and take the life of an individual belongs only to God. First Samuel
2:6 says: “The LORD kills and brings to life; he brings
down to Sheol and raises up” (ESV). No case of rape, or a
risk of a child to be born with physical or mental deficiency, entitles a human
to take somebody’s life. The Bible teaches that all is possible to him who
believes (Mark 9:23). Therefore, the cases that in the science’s eyes appear to
be impossible become possible in God’s eyes.

In
1996, Folha Universal (the official UCKG newspaper in Brazil) said,

This procedure (abortion), often
insane, besides provoking the death of a small being, who has no minimal chance
of defending himself, can lead its committer to death. Well, no one has a right
to take the life of other individual.

Yet,
afterward UCKG began to get near WP and support abortion. Before the election
of Lula for the Brazilian presidency in 2002, Bishop Rodrigues, who was one of
the UCKG founders, made political pilgrimages among evangelical leaders,
proclaiming, “We have the obligation to dedicate ourselves in the Lula
campaign… So let us embrace a new way of doing politics. It is action
socialism.”

Rodrigues
even asked forgiveness from Lula for the years UCKG had opposed him.

In
2003, he committed another fatal sin: he asked forgiveness from Afro-Brazilian
religions’ adherents at the Brazilian Congress floor for the “opposition” UCKG
had made against them. No much later, Rodrigues was swallowed by the vortex of
WP’s political scandals.

The
Brazilian religion that most embraces the homosexual sin is Candomblé, with
other Afro-Brazilian religions and witchcraft. When Rodrigues, as the top UCKG
representative in the Brazilian Congress, asked forgiveness from these
religions, he gave a green light to the demons of these religions, including
demons of homosexuality.

All
that is needed now is for UCKG and Macedo to ask forgiveness from Luiz Mott,
the most prominent leader in the homosexual movement in Brazil, for all the
demons of homosexuality they expelled from sorcerers during decades.

Yet, to
those who are surprised at Macedo now raising the flag of opposition to
evangelicals fighting the gay agenda, it is worthy to remember that the UCKG
founder has carried, for years, the disgraceful flag of explicit abortion
advocacy. In 2013, Macedo said, “I support abortion yes, and I say it without
fearing the consequences, and if I am sinning, I commit this sin fully aware,
yes!”

In
the official biography “O Bispo: A História Revelada de Edir Macedo” (The
Bishop: The Revealed History of Edir Macedo), published in 2007, authors
Christina Lemos and Douglas Tavolaro reveal what Macedo says:

“I support the right of a woman to
choose… I support abortion, yes. The Bible also does it… A woman needs to have
the right to choose.”

Now,
he supports homosexuals having a supposed right to choose homosexual “marriage,”
to the detriment of the natural family.

Therefore,
his new stance on homosexuality should be no surprise, because it is just a
natural progression of somebody who chose the advocacy of the legal slaughter
of the unborn. It is the “progress” of decadence.

I
suppose if Macedo lived in the time of King Ahab and Jezebel, he would have given
them support. How do I know it? Because he has supported modern Ahab (Lula) and
modern Jezebel (Dilma).

As to
Prophet Elijah, who made so much opposition to Ahab and Jezebel, Macedo would
say: “God does not want nothing by force. There are many ‘prophets’ raising a
flag against Baal worship, baby sacrifice and homosexual priests…”

Macedo,
who began his ministry expelling demons, now needs abortion and sodomy demons
expelled from him.

Tuesday, August 11, 2015

Pro-Family Cannibalism?

By Julio
Severo

C-Fam
has been doing a nice work of exposing pro-abortion and pro-sodomy activities,
groups and individuals around the world. But now, its director Austin Ruse did
a recent un-nice work of exposing one of our people — namely, Dr. Scott Lively —,
accusing him as a “boogeyman” used by homosexualist groups. In his article “Anatomy
of a Mythical Boogeyman,” Ruse employed indeed a mischievous
ruse to justify a moral cannibalization of Lively and his reputation.

Scott Lively

Ruse
said:

Gay activists
are not really afraid of Scott Lively. They know he’s had little to no effect
overseas. He is their invention, a vehicle to keep their base riled up and the
direct mail checks flowing.

Based
on rumors, Ruse also belittled Lively:

He has bummed
around the pro-family movement for many years but has never really been
accepted by the mainstream groups. I am told he does not work well with others.
One major pro-family figure told me that Lively is just as happy attacking
other pro-family people as he is going after the LGBTs.

A
Catholic attacking an evangelical. Something new?

So if
gay activists choose a valid victim (Catholic Ruse) to trash, we are supposed
to defend him. But if they choose an invalid victim (evangelical Lively), are
we supposed to trash him too?

Last
year, Matt Barber (who is not an unknown leader in the pro-family movement)
wrote an article
published on WorldNetDaily (which also is not unknown in the pro-family
movement) defending Lively:

“As did Christ, Scott Lively speaks
absolute truth, in absolute love, with absolutely no fear of personal
destruction or even death. He loves everyone, whether friend or foe, Christian
or pagan, straight or gay. For example, Scott and his family took
into their home and nursed, both physically and
spiritually, the late Sonny Weaver, a former homosexual who died, as so many
have, from AIDS – a natural consequence of unnatural behavior. Sonny became
homosexual after being raped at 7 years old by a gay man in a local YMCA. He
became a former homosexual after accepting Jesus as Lord of his life.”

Ruse’s
boogeyman piece received an intelligent answer from a fellow Catholic named “bonaventure,”
who said:

Dear Austin

You do realize that the homofascist
organizations like HRC, GLAAD, etc., refer to you no differently than they
refer to Scott Lively?

Maybe Lively is “marginal” (i.e.,
has a small, unconventional, protestant/fundamentalist ministry, etc). And
maybe he doesn’t get along too well with the more mainstream pro-life
ministries (many of which opposed various state level Personhood amendments).
So what? So what if he doesn’t share your humor, or doesn’t appreciate
listening to Timothy Dolan’s “jokes” on different pro-life organizations’ board
meetings?

You should have shown Scott Lively
under a better light in your article, rather than scoff at him — which is no
better than elevating him to be the chief boogeyman. Because, on the other side
of the culture war, you are as much a boogeyman as Scott Lively is. In fact,
you may even have your own “crimes
against humanity” federal lawsuit badge of honor soon…

Seriously and without sarcasm:
rather than presenting Scott Lively under the negative light as you did in your
article (correct me if I am reading too much into it), you should have rather
contacted him somehow, and joined him on a common front with whatever force and
influence you actually HAVE.

Another
reader, Nicola M. Costello, commented:

Why gratuitously trash Scott
Lively, a leader on our side of the issue Mr. Ruse?

Homosexualist
group GLAAD has a malicious bio sketch of
Ruse, basically describing him as a version 2 of Scott Lively.
Should now we treat Ruse as boogeyman 2?

In
their ruses against Lively and in their “Crimes
Against Humanity” lawsuit against him, homosexualist groups want a cannibalization
of Lively and much more. Now will they use Ruse’s boogeyman piece as an
evidence that pro-family groups are destructive and self-destructive?

“Marxist strategist Saul Alinsky
taught his followers to 1) pick a target to be the symbol of their opposition,
2) freeze the target in place through unceasing propaganda, and 3) publicly destroy
the target to set an example to those who oppose them. I’ve somehow become that
target: the sacrificial scapegoat of the LGBT movement. And, short of a miracle
of God, I will be publicly destroyed, if not through the ‘Crimes Against
Humanity’ lawsuit then by some other means. If we have learned nothing else
about the agitators of the modern LGBT movement, we know they are as relentless
and implacable as their ancient counterparts in Sodom, who would not desist
from their siege of Lot’s home even though they were struck blind by God.”

Above
all, Catholics and evangelicals know, in their Bibles, that Jesus said that a
house divided against itself cannot survive. He said:

Saturday, August 08, 2015

Mackenzie Presbyterian University and Its Pro-Abortion
Professor

By Julio
Severo

Abortion
legalization in Brazil was discussed in a Senate hearing on August 6, 2015. Among
the debaters were pro-abortion feminists. The big surprise was that the Senate introduced
one of them as “Márcia Tiburi, professor at the Mackenzie Presbyterian
University.” Mackenzie is the highest Calvinist educational institution in
Brazil.

Tiburi’s
pro-abortion discourse, recorded by TV Senado (the official TV of the Brazilian
Senate), began by saying that whenever she travels throughout Brazil in her
pro-abortion activism she takes the name Mackenzie with her, stressing that she
is not the only pro-abortion activist at Mackenzie. To watch the video in
Portuguese, use this link: https://youtu.be/DLxm7U0OEes

In
the hearing, the Mackenzie professor said, “To vociferate against abortion is
just a biopolitical way to control women’s lives… and above all to recruit
adherents for authoritarian causes… What is achieved by it and who wins by
achieving it? Antiabortion priests promote a speech by which ignorant masses
are convinced. In a nation of illiterate individuals, including women, and of
excessive corruption in moral terms, votes, tithes and general consumption are infallible.
Therefore, abortion legalization is a fundamental part of a socially
responsible democratic process.”

According
to her curriculum, she is directly connected to Mackenzie since 2008. Her
specialty is to teach philosophy and ethics. But the words that she vociferated
against the unborn life at the Senate demonstrate just the opposite: a total
lack of ethics. Any philosophy that despises the most innocent life despises
ethics itself.

Tiburi,
who in her pro-abortion feminist activism has been praised even by the
Communist Party of Brazil, has been exposing her lack of ethics since before 2008.
Before becoming a Mackenzie professor, she defended abortion in the official
website of the Communist Party of Brazil. If the contractor (Mackenzie—Presbyterian
Church of Brazil) had been careful to make a basic investigation, it would have
easily found, even by a simple Google search, that it was contracting not a
mere and innocent professor, but a radical activist thirsty for the legal
shedding of innocent blood.

How,
in these 7 years of Tiburi at Mackenzie, there was no problem and scandal? The hired
individual is directly connected to the pro-abortion movement. The contractor
is directly connected to the Presbyterian Church of Brazil (PCB).

Tiburi’s
sheer presence as professor at a Protestant university is a sign of victory for
pro-abortion militants and defeat for evangelicals, who should evangelize, not
contract, propagandists of baby-killing.

When
Tiburi chose the designation at the Senate of “Mackenzie professor,” she
fatally compromised the institution, which, because it is openly confessional (Mackenzie
PRESBYTERIAN University), chose to contract a professor who is a pro-abortion
feminist militant. The case is not that she deserves to be fired from
Mackenzie. She never deserved to be contracted.

The
hired individual is not to blame. The contractor, which has poorly chosen its
job applicants, is to blame.

If a
Pentecostal televangelist had committed the error of hiring a pro-abortion
feminist activist for one of its confessional institutions, the self-appointed
Calvinist apologists (“defenders of faith” and of “Sola Theologia”) would
certainly beating them with their Calvinist sticks and damning them to hell.

In
Mackenzie’s case and its pro-abortion professor, all the Calvinist apologists
are in deathly silence, as if they were under monastic oaths never to expose
anything of the Presbyterian university. In this scandal, no pro-abortion
feminist, or her contractor, is going to be “burned” at the fire of the Holy
Calvinist Inquisition. If the case were about some Pentecostal minister, he
would already have become ashes at the condemnation stake.

Nevertheless,
Mackenzie issued in the same day an official release saying:

Clarification Release

August 6, 2015 Chancellery Rectory

On August 6, 2015, the Mackenzie Presbyterian
University president issued a release read at the Senate Human Rights Committee
by Representative Leonardo Quintão to the attendees of the debate whose subject
dealt with abortion. Below, the full text:

Dear Rep. Leonardo Quintão

Mackenzie Presbyterian University, based on its
principles and values, rejects any attempt on life and affirms that the views
expressed by its professors are products of free speech inherent to the human
being and the intellectual life. Therefore, it reaffirms the stance of its
supporting institution, the Presbyterian Church of Brazil, which rejects both
abortion legalization, except for therapeutic abortion, when there is no other
way to save the life of a pregnant woman, and the use of abortifacient
contraceptives.

Evidently,
Mackenzie is not to blame for the insane views of its professors. But cannot a
Protestant-professing institution make a selection and hire only morally fit
professors and according to basic Christian and moral principles? Is there so
big shortage of competent Calvinist applicants for jobs in the Calvinist
institution that was necessary to hire an advocate of baby-killing? Why did not
Mackenzie choose a pro-family Calvinist? Is there, in the whole PCB, no
Calvinist able, in the place of the pro-abortion feminist, to teach philosophy
and ethics at Mackenzie?

And
now does Mackenzie want to dissociate itself from the hired activist by invoking,
in a cynically democratic nod, a defense of an alleged “product of free speech”?

In
this point, I am shocked! Is defense of abortion “free speech”? What about the
defense of the Holocaust? What about the defense of Nazism? What about the defense
of the Inquisition, which slaughtered Jews and Protestants?

Is lack
of ethics “free speech”?

What
about if instead of the pro-abortion professor, Mackenzie had a Julio Severo
who, in his life outside Mackenzie, voiced views against the cessationist
heresy, the Marxist Theology of Integral Mission and Freemasonry? Would Mackenzie
then defend the stances of Julio Severo as “products of free speech”?

Mackenzie
president’s release made it clear that the Presbyterian Church of Brazil “rejects
abortion legalization, except for therapeutic abortion.” He had to quote the Presbyterian
Church of Brazil (PCB), because the Mackenzie Presbyterian University is
subordinate to PCB — thereby making, in a sense, pro-abortion Tiburi strangely
connected to PCB.

Yet,
why does not PCB also reject the so called therapeutic abortion? Dr. Brian
Clowes, in his massive work “The Facts of Life,” says,

Therapeutic abortion: The
current medical literature equates “legal abortion” with “therapeutic abortion.”
The definition of the word “therapeutic,” however, mean “treatment of disease.” The
use of the term “therapeutic” is another pro-abortion attempt to sanitize a
repulsive act, and it also implies that pregnancy is a disease — an assertion
many pro-abortionists have made directly.

Dr.
Roy Heffernan of Tufts University Medical School has said that “Anyone who
performs a therapeutic abortion is either ignorant of modern medical methods or
unwilling to take the time and effort to apply them.”

If
Mackenzie is really filled with activists with the same mindset as Márcia
Tiburi, as she alleged at the Senate herself, I am going to receive a deluge of
boos and complaints. And perhaps even lawsuits. I can hardly wait the headlines:
“Pro-Abortion Professors at the Mackenzie Presbyterian University Sue Pro-Lifer
Julio Severo!”

Be it
as it may, no Christian-professing institution is forced to hire feminist
militants whose lack of ethics leads them to advocate the legal slaughter of
the unborn. If they do it, they have to take the consequences of a bad
Christian testimony.

Monday, August 03, 2015

John Perkins and His Confessions of an
Economic Hit Man

By Julio
Severo

Economist
John Perkins said, “Economic hit men (EHMs) are highly paid professionals who
cheat countries around the globe out of trillions of dollars. They funnel money
from the World Bank, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and
other foreign ‘aid’ organizations into the coffers of huge corporations and the
pockets of a few wealthy families who control the planet’s natural resources.
Their tools include fraudulent financial reports, rigged elections, payoffs,
extortion, sex, and murder. They play a game as old as empire, but one that has
taken on new and terrifying dimensions during this time of globalization. I
should know; I was an EHM.”

Other
revelations by Perkins are equally impressive. According to him, in his 2004
book “Confessions
of an Economic Hit Man,” Saudi Arabia has a very special
relationship with the U.S. since mid-1970s. He says,

“The
evidence was indisputable: Saudi Arabia, America’s longtime ally and the
world’s largest oil producer, had somehow become, as a senior Treasury
Department official put it, ‘the epicenter’ of terrorist financing… Saudi
largess encouraged U.S. officials to look the other way, some veteran
intelligence officers say. Billions of dollars in contracts, grants, and
salaries have gone to a broad range of former U.S. officials who had dealt with
the Saudis: ambassadors, CIA station chiefs, even cabinet secretaries…”

Perkins
came to get such knowledge not only because he was a respected economist, but
also because of his involvement, decades ago, with NSA (National Security
Agency) and even designing massive projects in Saudi Arabia.

In
the 1960s and 1970s, NSA was not internationally known, but today, because of
the leaks
of former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, NSA’s stealthy activities
comprising surveillance and espionage have been exposed. Yet, ten years before
Snowden, John Perkins had already made a significant exposé, which remained
largely unnoticed, because apparently no one was willing to believe that the
mysterious NSA was a malignant octopus.

How
did Perkins come to know NSA? In 1967 he married to a woman whose uncle was a
top echelon executive at NSA. In 1968 he was profiled by the NSA as an ideal
economic hit man (EHM).

He
had been deliberately hired by NSA because of his non-conservative qualities
and a lack of moral values. A truly conservative, moral man would never do what
he was hired to do.

In 1981
he married to another woman whose father was chief architect at Bechtel
Corporation and was in charge of designing and building cities in Saudi Arabia
— work financed through the 1974 EHM deal.

About
his NSA training, Perkins said,

“First,
I was to justify huge international loans that would funnel money back to MAIN
and other U.S. companies (such as Bechtel, Halliburton, Stone & Webster,
and Brown & Root) through massive engineering and construction projects.
Second, I would work to bankrupt the countries that received those loans (after
they had paid MAIN and the other U.S. contractors, of course) so that they
would be forever beholden to their creditors, and so they would present easy
targets when we needed favors, including military bases, UN votes, or access to
oil and other natural resources. My job, [NSA agent] said, was to forecast the
effects of investing billions of dollars in a country. Specifically, I would
produce studies that projected economic growth twenty to twenty-five years into
the future and that evaluated the impacts of a variety of projects. For example,
if a decision was made to lend a country $1 billion to persuade its leaders not
to align with the Soviet Union, I would compare the benefits of investing that
money in power plants with the benefits of investing in a new national railroad
network or a telecommunications system. Or I might be told that the country was
being offered the opportunity to receive a modern electric utility system, and
it would be up to me to demonstrate that such a system would result in
sufficient economic growth to justify the loan. The critical factor, in every
case, was gross national product. The project that resulted in the highest
average annual growth of GNP won. If only one project was under consideration,
I would need to demonstrate that developing it would bring superior benefits to
the GNP. The unspoken aspect of every one of these projects was that they were
intended to create large profits for the contractors, and to make a handful of
wealthy and influential families in the receiving countries very happy, while
assuring the long-term financial dependence and therefore the political loyalty
of governments around the world. The larger the loan, the better.”

This
was in the 1970s. I remembered Brazil, my country. In the 1970s, the military
government in Brazil kept up massive investments in infrastructure — highways,
telecommunications, hydroelectric dams, etc. The military rule, under President
Ernesto Geisel, borrowed billions of dollars. Brazil was enjoying an investment
boom that had pushed annual GDP growth to over ten percent. Large-scale
infrastructure projects, such as the Itaipu and Tucuruí hydroelectric dams,
fueled growth, and Brazil emerged as the undisputed industrial leader in Latin
America, earning the title “the Brazilian miracle.” But the boom fell apart. By
1982, Brazil halted payment of its main foreign debt, which is among the
world’s biggest.

Brazil
was apparently the perfect field for EHMs’ activities. The Brazilian military
government, which made investments of billions of dollars in infrastructure,
ended with loans and massive debts. And these debts had no relation with
corruption, because the military government was corruption-free. Probably, in
the modern history of Brazil, Brazilians never had a so corruption-free
government as the military government was.

If
the job of EHMs (and their colleagues) was to persuade countries to take out
loans worth billions of dollars, often to pay for infrastructure projects that
the EHMs themselves recommend, as John Perkins wrote in his book “Confessions
of an Economic Hit Man,” then Brazil was probably a big victim.

As
Brazil, many of the nations put into debt in the 1970s and 1980s were ruled by
right-wing militarists and their debts were used by their socialist enemies as
a reason to put their nations into a socialist route. The economic explorations
made these military allies of the U.S. vulnerable before socialists.

The
Brazilian military rule in the 1980s was plagued by inflation, recession and
massive foreign debt. The International Monetary Fund was a daily subject in
the Brazilian news. Socialist Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who in 2002 was
elected president of Brazil, agitated against the Brazilian government. His
main weapon was the economic crisis, which made the Brazilian people discontent
with the military presidents.

I
cannot imagine the military rule in Brazil running into massive debt because of
corruption. I only can imagine, by all the clues pointed by Perkins, that there
is a possibility that they fell into an economic hit man’s trap.

John
Perkins’ book was recommended to me by a U.S. conservative leader.

By
reading his book, you see NSA and other U.S. agencies as machines of economic exploitation
of nations. But often such exploitation is facilitated by political leaders of
these nations who also exploited economically their own people. I do not
believe that this was the case in Brazil, because the Brazilian military rule
was hard-working. When socialists overthrew U.S. allies in Latin America — an
overthrow facilitated by U.S. economic hit men —, they themselves became
exploiters, economically and also socially and religiously, because socialism
severely stifles speech and religious freedom.

Perkins
saw so much corruption among his professional peers in America exploiting the
poor in Third-World nations that he began to see favorably socialist ideas,
thinking that socialism was the only answer to the massive capitalist
corruption he saw coming from his own nation. Of course, he did not know the
Gospel, which is the only real answer to socialism and capitalist corruption.

The
human nature is wicked. If it occupies a high post, it explores people under
its control.

People
without the Gospel should be capable of not exploring other people, because
they have a conscience.

People
who have the Gospel are under a double responsibility not to explore, because
they have God’s conscience available to them (the Gospel) and their own
conscience.

It
not a sin to be wealthy. But God commands the rich to be also wealthy in
generosity. Yet, socialism sees all wealth (except for the wealthy socialist
establishment) as exploitation. The Bible does not see all rich as exploiters.
There are rich and there are exploiters. And there are wealthy exploiters.

In
his book, Perkins writes,

“‘We’re
a small, exclusive club,’ [NSA agent] said. ‘We’re paid—well paid—to cheat
countries around the globe out of billions of dollars. A large part of your job
is to encourage world leaders to become part of a vast network that promotes
U.S. commercial interests. In the end, those leaders become ensnared in a web
of debt that ensures their loyalty. We can draw on them whenever we desire—to
satisfy our political, economic, or military needs. In turn, these leaders
bolster their political positions by bringing industrial parks, power plants,
and airports to their people. Meanwhile, the owners of U.S. engineering and
construction companies become very wealthy… [NSA special agent] described how
throughout most of history, empires were built largely through military force
or the threat of it. But with the end of World War II, the emergence of the
Soviet Union, and the specter of nuclear holocaust, the military solution
became just too risky.”

Perkins
also shows how the U.S. changed profoundly Iran through stealthy economic
actions. He said,

“The
decisive moment occurred in 1951, when Iran rebelled against a British oil
company that was exploiting Iranian natural resources and its people. The
company was the forerunner of British Petroleum, today’s BP. In response, the
highly popular, democratically elected Iranian prime minister (and TIME
magazine’s Man of the Year in 1951), Mohammad Mossadegh, nationalized all
Iranian petroleum assets. An outraged England sought the help of her World War
II ally, the United States. However, both countries feared that military
retaliation would provoke the Soviet Union into taking action on behalf of
Iran. Instead of sending in the Marines, therefore, Washington dispatched CIA
agent Kermit Roosevelt (Theodore’s grandson). He performed brilliantly, winning
people over through payoffs and threats. He then enlisted them to organize a
series of street riots and violent demonstrations, which created the impression
that Mossadegh was both unpopular and inept. In the end, Mossadegh went down,
and he spent the rest of his life under house arrest. The pro-American Mohammad
Reza Shah became the unchallenged dictator. Kermit Roosevelt had set the stage
for a new profession, the one whose ranks I was joining.”

Of
course, the U.S. strategy in Iran eventually backfired, and today Iran has a
mortal hatred of America.

Perkins
also said,

“By
1968, the year I interviewed with the NSA, it had become clear that if the
United States wanted to realize its dream of global empire (as envisioned by
men like presidents Johnson and Nixon), it would have to employ strategies
modeled on Roosevelt’s Iranian example. This was the only way to beat the
Soviets without the threat of nuclear war. There was one problem, however.
Kermit Roosevelt was a CIA employee. Had he been caught, the consequences would
have been dire. He had orchestrated the first U.S. operation to overthrow a
foreign government, and it was likely that many more would follow, but it was
important to find an approach that would not directly implicate Washington.
Fortunately for the strategists, the 1960s also witnessed another type of
revolution: the empowerment of international corporations and of multinational
organizations such as the World Bank and the IMF. The latter were financed
primarily by the United States and our sister empire builders in Europe. A
symbiotic relationship developed between governments, corporations, and
multinational organizations.”

Perkins
explains more about their dirty work:

“Roosevelt-as-CIA-agent
problem had already been worked out. U.S. intelligence agencies—including the
NSA—would identify prospective EHMs, who could then be hired by international
corporations. These EHMs would never be paid by the government; instead, they
would draw their salaries from the private sector. As a result, their dirty
work, if exposed, would be chalked up to corporate greed rather than to
government policy. In addition, the corporations that hired them, although paid
by government agencies and their multinational banking counterparts (with
taxpayer money), would be insulated from congressional oversight and public
scrutiny, shielded by a growing body of legal initiatives, including trademark,
international trade, and Freedom of Information laws.”

Saudi
Arabia is “lucky.” Billions of its dollars in contracts, grants, and salaries
to U.S. officials have protected the Islamic nation from dark consequences of
EHMs.

Perkins
was related to Tom Paine (1737-1809), the American revolutionary leader who
fought for the U.S. independence from England. With his conscience, Perkins had
a motivation to write his book against the exploitations from NSA and other
U.S. agencies. He said,

“I
only had to return to the American Revolution and Tom Paine for a model. I
recalled that Britain justified its taxes by claiming that England was
providing aid to the colonies in the form of military protection against the
French and the Indians. The colonists had a very different interpretation.”